Beauty in the Breakdown
by LivingfortheBlue
Summary: Formerly known as Some Bottles of Wine and a Crackling Fire Ginny can't stand what she's done, and confesses all to Hermione while drunk. PostHogwarts. Rated T for language and mature themes.
1. Prologue

Beauty in the Breakdown: Prologue

"Hello, Hermione," Ginny slurred as she noticed the bushy-haired witch standing in her bedroom doorway. "Wha' are you doing here?"

"I was worried about you," Hermione said, frowning at the clearly drunk younger woman. "We were supposed to have dinner tonight, remember?"

"No," Ginny answered, quite honestly she thought. "I'm too pissed to remember anything. Except _him_. He's a good thing to remember." She took a long draught out of the bottle of wine in her hand and let her head loll back on the couch back.

"Ginny, how much have you had to drink?" the older woman asked worriedly, walking to the sofa in front of the fire, taking careful note of the two empty bottles of merlot thrown absently on the rug and the almost empty bottle of chardonnay in Ginny's hand. She tried to pluck the current bottle of wine out of Ginny's hand, but the other girl held on for all she was worth and slid to the floor.

"Not enough – I can't stop thinking about him," Ginny picked up her head and began to sob wildly. "Oh, gods, Hermione, what have I done?"

Hermione was beginning to feel alarmed. Ginny, who almost never drank, was absolutely pissed out of her mind and whining about some man. This was not her redheaded friend's normal behavior. "Ginny, why don't you tell me from the beginning?"

The redhead leaned her head back against the sofa. "Oh, gods, Hermione, you'll think I'm a terrible person. I _am_ a terrible person." She took another swig of chardonnay straight from the bottle. "From the beginning? All right then…"


	2. Chapter 1

Beauty in the Breakdown: Chapter 1

"Oh, gods, where do I even begin?" Ginny moaned into the sofa cushion. Hermione had carefully planted herself onto the opposite end of the sofa, just far enough out of projectile-vomit range, should it come to that.

"The beginning, Ginny," she gently reminded the other. "Just like you said you would."

Ginny sighed deeply and stared into the crackling fire, absently swirling the little bit of chardonnay left in the bottle in her hand. "Oh, gods. You're going to be furious at me, I expect," she said in a moment of lucidity amidst her drunken confessional.

"I promise I won't be," Hermione said, shifting slightly towards the end of the couch that Ginny had her head leaning against.

"I suppose the beginning is when Rufus Scrimgeour called me into his office for the first time. He wanted me to do something for him. Something he said was very important for The War. You could hear the capital letters as he said that, really. It was just over two years ago that he summoned me. Scrimgeour, I mean. I'd been working at the Ministry for just a few weeks in the mail room, you see, and I had absolutely no idea why the Minister himself wanted to see me. I was utterly terrified. I thought he was going to fire me, although in retrospect, I figured that task would have gone to my immediate supervisor.

"My point is, Scrimgeour called me into his office to discuss something with me. You see, he wanted me to spy on the Other Side, as he called them, in order to gain information for the Ministry, and, indirectly, the Order of the Phoenix.

"I, of course, objected strenuously. How was I to insinunate – insininuate – oh, bollocks, get in with the other side?" Clearly the wine was still in effect.

"That was when the old bastard leaned in with a malicious look in his eye. 'Oh, but Miss Weasley,' he said. And at that point, my heart just sunk into my toes and I just knew I was screwed – completely and utterly screwed.

"You see, at that point, he revealed to me something only a few people know – Draco Malfoy is – was obsessed with me. The only reason I knew is because Pansy Parkinson pointed it out to me a few days before Christmas his final year. At that point, everything just seemed to click. The way he was always there if I fell, in order to laugh at me, of course, or, if no one was around, to pick me up and ask if I was okay. It was the last bit that set me wondering until Pansy made it entirely clear to me." 

"Oh, Ginny, no," breathed Hermione as she listened raptly.

"Oh, yes, Hermione," Ginny responded lightly, swigging again from the chardonnay bottle. "At that point, we began to rendezvous – in secret, of course – and well, shagged quite a lot. That, I would like to point out, was not common knowledge. Just the fact that Malfoy was obsessed with me. Only three people knew about the shagging – myself, Draco, and Pansy. Pansy only knew because, well, she's Pansy and an annoying bint and just knew everything, didn't she," Ginny said rhetorically.

"Anyway, the point is, up until Draco graduated from Hogwarts, we had a clandestiny – fuck it – secret relationship that no one was to know about. Except it wasn't a relationship, just shagging. And more shagging. I must say, he was – is bloody fantastic."

Hermione looked a bit green around the gills.

"Sorry, Hermione. I just need to get this off my chest, and you're here. I know you don't need to hear everything, but I need to say everything, if you know what I mean. I'll try to think about it a bit more.

"Anyway, the point is, Scrimgeour needed a spy inside enemy lines, and who better than the girl who already shagged the enemy? (And had been possessed by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, but we already know how _that_ turned out.) Anyway, Scrimgeour sent me over into the enemy camp to spy and send back incriminating evidence that I found out about anyone there.

"But then something happened, Hermione. I fell in love with the bloody git, and he fell in love with me.

"And do you want to know a secret?" Hermione raised an eyebrow. Ginny surely knew how bad she was at keeping secrets.

Clearly, the other girl was too drunk to care as she raised her left hand and revealed two simple bands on her ring finger. "One is my engagement ring, the other, well, take a wild guess." 

Hermione's hands flew up to her mouth. "Oh, Ginny, you didn't."

"Oh, but I did," Ginny said softly, finishing off the bottle of chardonnay as she stared into the fireplace. She trailed into silence once more as Hermione continued to study the two rings on her finger.

"Goddammit!" she screamed, yanking her hand out of Hermione's and viciously throwing the chardonnay bottle into the fireplace.

"Oh, gods," she moaned, tears flowing as if a faucet had been turned on, "what in the seven hells have I done?"


	3. Chapter 2

Beauty in the Breakdown: Chapter 2

Hermione didn't know what to do as Ginny sobbed into the couch cushion. "Ginny," she said softly. "Ginny!" more insistently this time.

The other girl looked up. "Oh, hello, Hermione. What are you doing here?"

It was a valiant struggle for the brunette to keep from rolling her eyes. "You and I were supposed to have dinner, remember? When I came to fetch you, you were – and are, I might point out – pissed out of your mind on wine – nice vintages, by the way. Now, you are supposed to be telling me exactly WHY you're pissed out of your mind, but you instead dissolved into tears and threw an empty bottle into the fireplace. Thus far, all you've mentioned is that you," the green tinge returned, "shagged Draco Malfoy in school and somehow Scrimgeour knew about it."

"Oh," Ginny said, shrinking a little. "Sorry. I'm an utter mess right now, I know, but I have good reason to be."

"And that reason _is_," Hermione drew out the last word with exaggerated patience.

Ginny laughed hollowly. "I think I need a glass of water. Would you mind? I don't think I can get up without falling over." At the other girl's look, she added, "I promise I'll tell you as soon as you walk in with the glass of water. I _know_ I'm piss drunk. Don't!" she said as Hermione brought out her wand to perform a Sobering Charm. "Trust me, if you sober me up now, you won't ever hear the truth – at least, not from me."

Hermione moved to put her wand away, and then as an idea struck, conjured a glass of water. "Here," she said brusquely, shoving the glass into her friend's hand. "Now drink."

Ginny wrinkled her nose at the other woman and took a small sip, then leaned her head against the sofa once more.

"As I said before, I slept with Malfoy many times at Hogwarts. He was intoxicating. I thought at first that if I slept with him a few times, he'd get out of my system and I could go back to normal life.

"But I couldn't. Every time we, well, you know, we got closer and closer. The night before he graduated, he told me he loved me. I completely lost it and ran out of the room right away. I could hear him calling after me, but I just ran until I made it back to Gryffindor Tower. I snuck into the common room (since, as I'm sure you remember, there was that huge party going on) and up the stairs, where I cried all night."

"Ginny," Hermione tried to interrupt at this point to ask the relevance of this information, as it made her feel queer to think about her best friend's little sister being in love with The Enemy.

"It will make sense, Hermione, just wait," Ginny said, sipping her water again. "After graduation, I figured I would never see him again. Unfortunately I was wrong.

"As I said before, Scrimgeour somehow knew about Draco and me." Hermione noted interestedly the slip of the tongue that had Ginny calling the ferret by his first name. "He wanted a spy inside the Death Eater camps, and decided I would do just the trick.

"I must say, the way he planned to get me there was absolutely ingenious. I don't think you could have thought of a better one," Ginny remarked. Hermione's eyes narrowed, but she let the comment slide. For now. Ginny continued, "I was set up so I was kidnapped from Diagon Alley by a group of Death Eaters including Malfoy," (back to the last name, Hermione noted).

"Scrimgeour was absolutely positive that Malfoy would not let any other Death Eaters near me once I was imprisoned, and he was absolutely right. I was kept in Malfoy's tent in a cage. (Don't laugh – they threatened me with a genie bottle.) None of the other Death Eaters were allowed inside, though there were always some posted outside the tent flaps. There was no need. I knew my place was there, with Malfoy.

"The first night I was conscious for, I remember sitting huddled in the cage for hours as Malfoy sat on his bed and stared at me. (Can you believe they actually had beds, Hermione? Our troops were sleeping on cots!) He just wouldn't stop staring. And then he finally spoke."

"_Ginny," Malfoy said, still perched on the edge of his bed._

_She didn't look up. _

"_Ginny," he said more forcefully. "Ginny, look at me."_

_Slowly she lifted her head and brown eyes met gray. "Hello, Draco," she whispered._

_He dropped his head. "Bloody hell. This is a right awful mess you've got us in, you know that, right?"_

"_Us?" she responded furiously. "Us? There is no us, Draco. As I recall, I was the stupid one walking out by myself. You, on the other hand, were one of my captors."_

_He buried his face into his hands. "I didn't want to," he mumbled through them._

"_I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that," Ginny sneered in almost perfect imitation of him._

"_I said, I didn't want to!" Draco glared at her. "If you had any idea what you did to me, what you do to me still, you would understand. No, when I try to tell you how I feel, you run like a scared rabbit."_

"_How would you feel if the person you knew you could never be with upped and confessed their love for you? You _knew_ it couldn't work, and yet you went and told me anyway! I warned you, didn't I, before we even started this, to not fall in love with me. I distinctly remember you sneering at me before saying, 'Fine. There's not a chance in hell of it happening anyway.'"_

_He looked away as she spewed her venomous words at him, then down at his hands. She could tell she'd hurt him, and it hurt her just as badly to have to do it._

"_They wanted to rape you, you know," he said to his hands._

"_What?" Ginny asked. That was not what she had been expecting to hear next._

"_The Death Eaters I was with last night. They wanted to rape you and kill you. I convinced them that you were too valuable, and that you could give us information," he held up a hand as Ginny started to speak, outraged, "I'm not going to tell them anything you don't want me to."_

_Ginny sagged against the bars in relief. Dear gods, she had had no idea what would have happened to her had Draco not been in that group, prearranged as it was. "Draco," she said softly, reaching through the bars towards him. _

_He stood up and took the two steps to cross to her cage and took her hands. "I've missed you," he murmured._

_Ginny closed her eyes, fully aware that she would undoubtedly regret what she was to say next. "I missed you, too."_

"Ginny," Hermione said warningly. "Do I want to hear what happened after that?"

Ginny opened her eyes from her reminisces and blinked at the light from the fireplace. "Probably not," she said, draining the last of the water from the tumbler. She then proceeded to pull out her own wand.

"Ginny," again with the warning tone, Hermione spoke. "What are you doing?"

"Not a Sobering Charm," the redhead responded. She then conjured another bottle of wine.

Hermione groaned. "Really, Ginny, don't you think you've had enough to drink?"

"No," Ginny responded, using her wand to remove the cork. "Would you like some?"

"Absolutely not. I plan on Apparating home and I don't want to splinch myself." Hermione sat back on the couch and began counting on her fingers and muttering to herself. Finally she sat up again and said, "Dear gods, Ginny, I'm amazed that you're still awake and talking. You don't usually drink, do you?"

"No. So I have no idea when I'm actually pissed. I keep thinking I'm only buzzed. Wait, that's not relevant. Do you want to hear what happened next or what?" Ginny asked impatiently, swigging from the wine bottle again (a very old Rhone, it appeared).

"Answer me one more question first," Hermione said, eyeing the wine bottle. "Where are you getting these bottles from? It's incredibly difficult to conjure a wine that is old and good."

"Oh, I'm not conjuring, love. I'm summoning. These are from Draco's private wine cellar at Malfoy Manor."

Hermione blinked in surprise, then simply said, "Oh. Well, then, by all means continue."

**A/N: I'm not a review whore, so I will simply say I hope you're enjoying this and I hope you will continue to read as I hopefully continue to update every couple of days.**

**I will point out that I am participating in Script Frenzy (www dot scriptfrenzy dot org) for the month of June, so updates will undoubtedly be fewer and farther between. Once SF is over, though, I fully intend to resume normal updates.**


End file.
